Saturday, January 30, 2010

Reading this makes me wonder: is the "lawyer", Omar Tarazi, being indicted for his role in the mail-tampering and fund-stealing case that Brian Smith was behind as well? And should he still be allowed to have any part in this?

The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of a series of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military officials.

The deployments come at a critical turning point in President Obama’s dealings with Iran’s leadership, when he is warning that his diplomatic outreach will now be combined with the “consequences,” as he put it in the State of the Union address, of the country’s continued defiance on its nuclear program. The administration is trying to win broad international consensus for sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Western nations say controls the military side of the nuclear program.

As part of that effort, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly warned China on Friday that its opposition to sanctions was shortsighted. The Senate, meanwhile, last week unanimously approved a resolution authorizing sanctions that include cutting off gasoline to Iran, a step Mr. Obama’s aides say he is reluctant to take.

The deployments are partly intended to address American concerns about possible retaliation for whatever sanctions are imposed. The administration is also trying to demonstrate to Israel that there is no immediate need for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities.

The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review.

In the letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that the Justice Department is reviewing Hatch's request and other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into whether the BCS violates antitrust laws.

"Importantly, and in addition, the administration also is exploring other options that might be available to address concerns with the college football postseason," Weich wrote, including asking the Federal Trade Commission to review the legality of the BCS under consumer protection laws.

This action suggests a mind idled and addled by the failure, and resulting inertia, of his first year in office.

This may turn out to be Obama's Killer Rabbit moment.

Americans are not going to take too kindly to this insane step during the worst recession since the 1930's.

People are celebrating the fact that the Obama Administration is considering relocating the terrorists’ trial from New York to another American city. Yet there’s still no talk of moving the trial out of our U.S. civilian courts to where it should take place – a military tribunal.

Now the administration is backtracking in order to fix its initially blundered decision to try these dangerous terrorists in New York City despite the great danger and cost to New Yorkers. This scenario is all too common in Washington. The tactic is to propose something so outrageous that the public will rise up and demand common sense, and then the White House “concedes” and changes its initial decision to give the impression of newfound reasonability and moderation. But the problem still isn’t solved! The trial location debate becomes a diversion so that we’ll take our eyes off the ball. The point missed is that our President still wants to give these terrorists U.S. constitutional protections in our civilian courts, allowing them to lawyer-up on our dime.

Legislation granting President Barack Obama additional powers to place unilateral sanctions on companies that help supply Iran with gasoline passed the Senate with unanimous support last week as the US seeks to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The vote was a rare moment of bipartisanship for the Senate and increases pressure on the Obama administration as it pursues the goal of broader sanctions against Tehran through the United Nations Security Council. A similar bill passed the House of Representatives in December and compromise language between the two chambers could be reached within weeks.

Iran has condemned the US Senate for approving gasoline import sanctions against the Middle Eastern country, saying it follows Washington’s traditional line of ineffective policy-making.

“We have repeatedly announced that the sanctions the US has imposed against our people over the past 31 years…have had no result but solidifying the resolve and intention of our nation to seek independence and self-sufficiency and attain highest levels of sophisticated technology,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast.

“We have always announced that the war-mongering and military build-up policies of the unilateralist countries under the pretext of solving regional crisis are wrong as their failure has repeatedly been emphasized,” Ramin said.

Iran’s criticism came after the US Senate voted to strengthen existing sanctions against Iran and impose new ones which target its gasoline supplies as part of Washington’s effort to dissuade Tehran from pursuing nuclear weapons and cracking down on internal dissent.

“We have all watched the Iranian regime oppress its own people on the streets of Iran and continue to defy the international community on nuclear issues,” said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.). “That is why it is so important that we move this legislation forward quickly.”

I THINK OBAMA COULD SIGN THIS INTO LAW BY NEXT FRIDAY - IF HE REALLY WANTED TO.

OBAMA SHOULD/COULD IMPLORE THEM TO GET A JOINT BILL PASSED ON ON HIS DESK NEXT WEEK.

Doug Ellison from UnmannedSpaceflight.com has done it again… and again… and again. Here are new Mars flyover videos Doug has created from data from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Using DEM (Digital Elevation Model)– (also known as DTM Digital Terrain Model) files provided by the HiRISE team, Doug is able to render 3-D movies of a specific location on Mars. Since he is using actual high-resolution data from HiRISE, Doug says the terrain seen in the movies has accurate vertical scaling and is not exaggerated.

Recovery teams yesterday sought to retrieve the black boxes of an Ethiopian aircraft that crashed off Lebanon’s coast, with hope the data would provide answers to the mystery surrounding the tragedy. “We expect to have them some time today,” Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said.

Search teams picked up the flight data recorder signals late on Wednesday but Aridi said it remained unclear whether the boxes were still inside the body of the Boeing 737-800, which plunged into the Mediterranean on Monday with 90 people on board. “If the black boxes are not in the body of the plane, it is easier to access them,” he said. “But if they are still inside the plane, the recovery will be more complicated.”

The boxes were located in a seafloor trench which makes access more difficult, a defence ministry official said on condition of anonymity.US navy destroyer the USS Ramage, part of an international search operation, picked up the signals approximately 10 kilometres west of Beirut airport at a depth of 4,265 feet below sea level, an army spokesman said also requesting anonymity.

The Ocean Alert, a civilian vessel stationed in Cyprus, was working to salvage the device, he said. The vessel is equipped to reach objects 6,561 feet below sea level. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, bound for Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after takeoff from Beirut at 2:37 am during a raging thunderstorm on Monday.

I BELIEVE THE BLACK BOXES WILL PROVE THAT THE JET DID NOT COME DOWN BECAUSE OF MAKING A WRONG TURN INTO BAD WEATHER, BUT WAS BLOWN UP.

Well, the president has a choice. He can do a genuine pivot to the center the way that Bill Clinton did when he suffered a defeat early in his first term, or he can fake it.

I guess that he is going to attempt the second, and that is for two reasons. The first is that he is not a hostage of the party's left, he is a man of the left. Clinton was a man of the center. He had long been in the DLC, which is the centrist faction of his party.

Obama is a man — Harvard faculty club, 20 years in the pew of Jeremiah Wright, a friend of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi, the PLO propagandist. This is who he is and where he lived, and you saw it all in his agenda this year. It was a left-wing agenda.

But secondly, it's a question of his vanity. He's a man who believes that he can still do the magic. He's a man who believes with his silver tongue he can talk ayatollahs into giving up nukes; with silver tongue he can talk America into believing you can expand health-care by 30 million people and cut costs at the same time.

And a man who said even last week after the Massachusetts defeat, it was because of insufficiency of communication with the American people. This is a guy who has been on the tube practically every night.

This is a man who I think will fake a pivot and will at least attempt it and see if it works. We saw a hint of that when he announced the [discretionary spending] freeze yesterday, which is in and of itself a phony and a fraud.

When President Bill Clinton faced a Republican uprising and a nation that turned deeply skeptical about his agenda, he used the 1996 State of the Union address to declare that “the era of big government is over.”

That move to the middle — arguably more rhetoric than reality — stopped Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution in its tracks. So why did President Barack Obama go a different route on Wednesday night, giving little ground and declaring that the problem was not his agenda but a deficit of trust in government and of pragmatism? If there was a defining line in Mr. Obama’s speech, it might have been “Let’s try common sense,” to which he ad-libbed, “a novel concept.”

The difference may lie in very different times. Mr. Clinton had already lost Congress by the time he gave that speech. Mr. Obama’s message was that Democrats should not be so certain that they were about to suffer the same fate. He pointedly reminded them that while they may have lost their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, they have not lost control of either house of Congress — at least not yet.

THIS IS PURE DENIAL. THE TIMES ARE NOT DIFFERENT. THE MEN ARE.

CLINTON WAS A POLITICIAN FIRST. OBAMA IS AN IDEOLOGUE FIRST.

CLINTON WHO RAN AS A MODERATE BUT THEN GOVERNED FOR THE FIRST TWO YEARS AS A LEFTIST, MOVED BACK TO THE CENTER TO SURVIVE, AND THEN THRIVED.

OBAMA - WHO ALSO RAN AS A CENTRIST, BUT WHO HAS GOVERNED LIKE A LEFTIST - WON'T DO THIS BECAUSE HE IS REALLY A DEEPLY COMMITTED RADICAL LEFTIST.

WELL, THERE IS ONE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TIMES: IN1994 THERE WAS ACTUALLY LESS DISCONTENT WITH THE DEMOCRAT/LIBERAL AGENDA THAN THERE IS NOW.

2010 WILL BE WORSE FOR DEMOCRATS THAN 1994 - AND BETTER FORE THRE USA!

(IsraelNN.com) A growing number of Arab youths take part in the Holocaust Studies Program at Holocaust Museum Yad VaShem, according to the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor (MoITL). Most of these youths attend professional schools that are run by MoITL.

According to the ministry, a total of 3,800 eleventh grade students from MoITL schools are participating in the Holocaust Studies Program this year, and of these – about 1,500 are Arabs. Last year, the total number of MoITL school students who participated was about 3,200 and 1,300 of them were Arabs.

[...]

Arabs who participate in the studies have special problems with the subject matter, Birger said, including ignorance of basic Holocaust-related terms and mixed feelings including “suspiciousness toward other people's suffering and social alienation toward Israeli society.”

The Holocaust studies program for Arabs therefore treats the Holocaust first as a universal event, and only later tells the personal stories of Jews who were murdered.

This brings up some challenging questions: do they teach clearly about the Arab/Islamic role in the Holocaust, such as that of Haj-Amin el-Husseini? Because if they don't, that's buckling to political correctness! No matter what their reaction is, they have to know if a member of their society committed an act of evil, and how they can learn to avoid and prevent those kind of things from happening in the future.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.

THAT'S GOOD.

THAT'S ABOUT ALL.

BIGGEST UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE SPEECH:

I take my share of the blame for not explaining it [OBAMACARE] more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, this process left most Americans wondering what’s in it for them.

WE DID KNOW WHAT WAS IN IT FOR US, AND WE THOUGHT IT SUCKED.

HERE'S ONE OF THE BIGGEST LIES:

We will continue to go through the budget line by line to eliminate programs that we can’t afford and don’t work...

OBAMA SIGNED THE PORKULUS BILL; THE DAMAGE IS ALREADY DONE; WE DON'T WANT THAT PORK FROZEN; WE WANT IT CUT.

REPEAT: WE DON'T WANT THE PORK FROZEN; WE WANT IT CUT.REPEAT: WE DON'T WANT THE PORK FROZEN; WE WANT IT CUT.

Oil prices continued their two-week slide on Wednesday after a government report showed demand for crude products dropped even further from the weak levels of a year ago when the recession's grip on the economy was strongest.

Benchmark crude for March delivery fell $1.04 to settle at $73.67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's the lowest settlement price since Dec. 14, when crude dipped to $73.46.

The World Economic Forum in Davos has begun with bankers and regulators clashing on plans for more regulation.

"We need good regulation, better regulation but not more regulation," Lord Levene, chairman of the insurance market Lloyd's of London said.

Barclays head Bob Diamond also suggested that more rules would drive banks out of London and New York.

The debate comes after US President Barack Obama proposed breaking up banks that are "too big to fail".

"We need a strong financial centre in New York and a strong financial centre in London," said Mr Diamond. "This is a time when isolated actions in the UK and US are not constructive."

He added: "I have seen no evidence ... to suggest that shrinking banks and making banks smaller and narrower is the answer."

... Lord Levene told attendees that more regulation in the US and UK may drive banks and businesses to emerging financial centres - such as Singapore, Shanghai and Zurich.

He pointed to the huge influx of business into London after the US passed the Sarbanes-Oxley act following the Enron and Worldcom scandals. The move, aimed at holding company directors to account, led to higher costs and an increased threat of legal action for firms listed in New York, he said.

That led to record listings on the the London Stock Exchange in the years leading to the financial crisis.

"In the City of London, we want to build statues to Mr Sarbanes and Mr Oxley for all the business they gave us," he joked.

Lord Levene also criticised efforts to curb large bank bonuses - a source of public outcry in the US and UK. "Compensation is a side issue," he said.

IF HIGH TAXES AND A LOT OF REGULATION WAS GOOD, THEN WE'D ALL BE SPEAKING RUSSIAN AND DRIVING ZAPOROZHETS.

THE BUBBLE WAS CAUSED BY EXCESSIVE REGULATION:" THE USG DEMANDED THAT BANKS MAKE BAD LOANS, THEN HAD FANNIE MAE BUY THEM AND MAKE DERIVATIVES OUT OF THEM WHICH POISONED THE ENTIRE GLOBAL BANKING SYSTEM.

THE ANSWER IS LESS REGULATION AN NO BAILOUTS: LET BANKS RISK THEIR OWN MONEY WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT POLITICIANS WON;T BE ABLE TO MAKE TAXPAYERS BAIL THEM OUT.

Turkey's terrible leader Tayyip Erdogan, as reported by the AP Wire, which has now picked up on this serious matter, has been taken to task in a special Israeli foreign ministry report:

JERUSALEM (AP) - An internal Israeli Foreign Ministry document accuses Turkey's prime minister of fueling anti-Semitism with his criticism of Israel, an official said Tuesday, threatening to spark a new diplomatic row with one of its few Muslim allies.

The ministry's report comes two weeks after Israel's deputy foreign minister enraged Turkey by summoning the country's ambassador for a humiliating public reprimand shown on Israeli TV. Although Israel was forced to apologize, the report said the reprimand made it clear to Turkey that there must be a limit to its criticism.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a fierce critic of Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip last year. The report accused Erdogan, leader of an Islamic-oriented party, of going too far with his rhetoric and creating "negative public opinion" toward Israel.

Isn't he the president of Turkey? That's something this article may get wrong. But really, he's an autocrat. (Update: Abdullah Gul, from a search I did on Google, is the president. I suppose that straightens things out a bit.)

"He does this by repeating motifs in his speeches of describing the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza and blaming Israel of committing war crimes, going as far as using anti-Semitic expressions and incitement," the report said.

It said Erdogan, for instance, does not distinguish between "Israeli" and "Jewish," turning criticism of Israel into anti-Jewish diatribes.

It also said he has turned a blind eye to anti-Semitic references in the Turkish media and has made ignorant and insulting comments about Jews.

The report said Erdogan has made comments like "Jews are good with money" without understanding their anti-Semitic character, but officials would give no further examples.

A year ago, a statement attributed to Erdogan said that in its Gaza war, Israel was "perpetrating inhuman actions which would bring it to self-destruction. Allah will sooner or later punish those who transgress the rights of innocents."

Excerpts of the ministry's report were published in the Haaretz daily and confirmed by an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a confidential document.

In Turkey, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu rejected the charge. "To criticize Israel is not anti-Semitism," he told independent NTV television. "Criticism of Israel's policies should not be given other meanings." He called on Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza.

Maybe it's not anti-semitism to criticize Israel, and there are legitimate reasons to do so if you can find them, but to distort the reasons why Israel has to maintain a blockade on Gaza most certainly is. Israel needs to maintain the barrier because of terrorist attacks. But I guess Turkey considers those okay.

The ties between us and them are going to come sooner or later, and there's no chance Turkey will call off the anti-semitic attacks they have on TV now. And lest we forget, the Turks still don't recognize their genocide of the Armenians during WW1.

P. David Hornik at Front Page Magazine writes about how Israel is now trying to fight back against the poison that the UN's Goldstone has cooked up in his deliberately biased attack on Israel.

The New York Times reports this week that the Israeli army is now preparing its own rebuttal to the report, and that “its central aim is to dispel the report’s harsh conclusion—that the death of noncombatants and destruction of civilian infrastructure were part of an official plan to terrorize the Palestinian population.” Although the rebuttal, which is soon to be submitted to UN officials, is supposed to be under wraps until then, correspondent Ethan Bronner quotes some statements by “officers involved in writing the report.”

The best response would be to withdraw from the UN. It does Israel no good to be a member any more than any other democratic nation, and might help to precipitate the UN's closure even sooner. As mentioned before, the UN has to go sooner or later.

figuring out whether to stay or walk requires calculations too complicated and time consuming for the average homeowner to perform. (View the paper to see the calculations.) For those who don’t want to do the calculations themselves, the online “Does It Make Financial Sense To Walk Away & Rent?” calculator at YouWalkAway.com can help.

AWFUL.

FOR DECADES LIBS LIKE THOSE AT THE NYTIMES PRESSURED POLITICIANS TO FORCE THE BANKS TO MAKE BAD LOANS (THE CRA).

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

When CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton made his annual appearance before Washington bureau staffers this month, he got an earful over the network’s decision to shave an hour off “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer in favor of rising star Rick Sanchez and “Rick’s List,” his new two-hour show.

... at one point Howie Lutt, senior director for “The Situation Room,” stood up and asked the roughly 200 staffers assembled in the bureau to raise their hands if they respect him or Blitzer as a journalist, according to network sources.

Almost everyone assembled raised their hand for Blitzer; only a few showed similar support for Sanchez.

While that response could be taken as a slight to Sanchez, some staffers say it’s more a reflection of the general sense of anxiety as CNN tries to find a winning formula for an afternoon/early evening lineup that’s being soundly beaten by Fox News and prime-time programming that last year for the first time also finished behind MSNBC.

“There’s a lot of change here right now,” said John King, a key component of the new CNN strategy. In a few weeks, the former host of “State of the Union” will take the 7 p.m. time slot given up by Lou Dobbs, affirming CNN’s commitment to having only nonpartisan hosts in the evening hours, in contrast to Fox and MSNBC.

Fifty-four House members are defying AIPAC and calling on President Obama to lift the deadly blockade of Gaza.

... In short, the courageous 54 want the blockade lifted.

Please take a look at the list of these legislators who will, no doubt, catch hell from powerful AIPAC types in their districts and, more significanyly, among their donor base.

Also note this. The fact that your favorite liberal is not among the 54 does not mean he or she disagrees with their braver colleagues. It only means that they are not ready to stand up and be counted.

The 54 deserve our thanks as does J Street and Americans for Peace Now which supported the House effort that was led by three Minnesotans: Keith Ellison, James Oberstar, and Betty McCollum.

Just one day after a Der Spiegel report claimed that new intelligence acquired by Germany's BND offered conclusive proof that Iran's nuclear program had a military angle, a Revolutionary Guards commander on Tuesday declared that the country planned to inaugurate "several new missiles and arms projects" in February, Reuters reported.

"Iran's Defense Ministry will inaugurate several missiles and arms projects during the Fajr (Dawn) 10-day period, marking the victory of the 1979 Islamic revolution," Massoud Jazayeri said during a news conference, which was quoted by Reuters. Jazayeri was also quoted as saying that new satellite projects would be unveiled at the same time.

The 31st anniversary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution begins on February 1, and will continue until the 10th of the month.

The announcement will likely only stoke the latest furor which has followed Der Spiegel's revelation of the damning German intelligence showing the Iranian nuclear program's military side.

Such documents, as well as information passed on to Western intelligence agencies by Iranian defectors and sources within Iran, are causing growing alarm among US and European leaders. In its report, Der Spiegel assessed that the White House may consequently raise threat levels from yellow to red.

Not even another winter blast for much of the country could stop energy prices from sliding again on Tuesday.

Crude, natural gas and heating oil prices fell even as below-average temperatures were forecast for much of the eastern half of the country through at least the end of the week. Natural gas prices were off by nearly 4 percent.

Cold and snow from before Christmas into the first part of January helped drive oil prices to a 15-month high earlier this month as homeowners from Chicago to Florida cranked up their thermostats .

But even though huge stockpiles of natural gas and heating oil are being whittled down this winter, supplies are ample.

The recession has crushed demand for electricity and natural gas by companies that make cars, steel and appliances. Many utilities have reported industrial consumption was off by as much as 15 percent to 20 percent last year.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has suggested the state could reduce prison spending by housing undocumented inmates in Mexican jails.

In comments made during a question and answer session, he seemed to suggest the prisons would be specially built.

Mr Schwarzenegger said the costs of building and running the prisons in Mexico would be half of California's.

The state has one of the most overcrowded and underfunded prison systems in the US.

Last year, after a riot broke out in one prison, authorities were ordered to develop a plan to free 40,000 of the 150,000 inmates being held within two years.

"I think we can do so much better in the prison system alone if we can go and take inmates - for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here - and get them to Mexico," Mr Schwarzenegger said.

...He added that he believed allowing the private sector to become involved in running and managing prisons would also help cut costs.

For the past two years, the Turkish people have been bombarded with sensational revelations about alleged dirty tricks by elements of the military.

Some of the allegations, relating to a sinister "deep state" network known as Ergenekon, have already resulted in the arrest and trials of dozens of people, including retired generals.

But there have been further reports of military plots against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - backed by some convincing-looking documents - all reported in a two-year-old independent newspaper.

'No longer untouchable'

The latest alleges a plan drawn up seven years ago by the army to plant bombs in mosques and create enough chaos to justify a coup.

The paper has handed a new set of leaked documents to state prosecutors for further investigation - but the chief-of-staff of the armed forces, Gen Basbug, has now responded with an angry statement denying the possibility of such a plan.

"Our soldiers charge into battle crying out 'Allah, Allah'," he said, banging his fist on the table.

Either Obama wins Obamacare now (because of thuggery and intimidation and arm-twisting), AND HE AND THE DEMOCRATS SUFFER A HUGE BACKLASH AND LOSE BIG IN 2010)...

OR OBAMCARE GOES DOWN TO DEFEAT NOW, AND OBAMA'S PRESIDENCY IS MORTALLY WOUNDED.

IT'S A WIN-WIN FOR THE RIGHT-WING.

Ahhhhhhhh.......

IOW: HUBRIS STRIKES AGAIN!

[NOTE: YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: THESE ARE THE SAME TACTICS OBAMA AND AXELROD AND RAHM USED IN THE CAUCUSES AGAINST HILLARY SUPPORTERS, AND THAT THE BPP USED IN PHILLY!] Posted by Reliapundit @ 9:41 PM ; Permalink

Britain stepped up its push for a global tax on financial transactions Monday as part of broad plans to reform the banking sector following the financial crisis, amid concerns that the US may act alone.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted that his proposal for an international levy on financial transactions was "gathering support around the world," a day after Chancellor Alistair Darling hit out at US proposals.

... Brown has urged leading economies, including the United States, France and Germany, to consider a tax on financial transactions to make banks more accountable to society.

The prime minister has pressed the idea of a so-called Tobin Tax but said nations could also consider an insurance scheme aimed at preventing a repeat of the huge state bailouts of banks caused by the financial crisis.

A Tobin Tax was originally proposed in 1971 by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin as a means of reducing speculation in global markets, but Tobin himself later doubted his own idea was workable.

... On Monday meanwhile, Brown told a press conference: "There is a very big risk that if we don't take the action that is necessary, sometimes very controversial, that banks will relapse into what they were before, taking reckless risks at the expense of the customers."

Er um... if the problem is recklessness then the solution is simple, requires NO NEW REGULATIONS and is not expensive for the tax-payer: just let the banks which are reckless to the point of failure fail.

Bailouts - even if they're just implied by the law and not explicit - remove the moral hazard for recklessness and encourage recklessness.

The fact that the markets saw the mortgage based derivatives as being backed b the US Treasury is what made the investors who bought them reckless.

Therefore, the solution is not taxes or regulations, just the courage to let the market heal itself.

AGAIN: GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION:

IN THE USA, THE GOVERNMENT ACTUALLY FORCED BANKS TO MAKE RECKLESS MORTGAGE LOANS WITH THE IMPLICIT GUARANTEE THAT THE USG WOULD BACK THEM UP VIA FANNIE MAE.

THIS FUELED THE BUBBLE AND LED TO THE BAILOUTS.

IF GOVERNMENT HAD NOT FORCED THE BANKS TO MAKE RECKLESS LOANS (IN THE NAME OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND BECAUSE OF THE COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT, THE CRA) , THEN THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO NEED FOR ANY BAILOUTS BECAUSE THERE WOULD'VE BEEN NO BUBBLE TO BURST AND NO BANKS WITH ANY RECKLESS LOAN PAPER OR THEIR DERIVATIVES.

GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION.

THE ANSWER IS SMALLER MORE LIMITED GOVERNMENT.

LET BANKS BE BANKS AND LET THEM AND THEIR SHAREHOLDERS KEEP THEIR PROFITS OR TAKE THE LUMPS.

This message goes out to every vulnerable Democratic Congressman representing a Republican or even centrist district – and after tonight, who among you is not vulnerable? It is a simple message: we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. The easy way is, you suddenly decide that you have a burning desire to spend more time with your families. So you don’t run for re-election, you walk off stage technically undefeated, and you go join a lobbying firm. The hard way is, you do run for re-election, and we pry you out of your seats.

We want to do this the hard way. We will enjoy doing it.

That’s your only warning. And remember: nobody is going to be able to save you. If the President, the DSCC, the DCCC, the DNC, the SEIU, ACORN, and the netroots couldn’t manage a win in Massachusetts… what do you think that they can do for you?

Here’s the strategy. We contest every race. The goal is to put as many liberty-minded conservatives into office as we can, and where that is impossible, to elect the most congenial Republican we can get. In Mass, that was a Scott Brown. In California, it may end up being a Meg Whitman, or a Carly Fiorina. But where a liberty minded conservative has a shot, then back that candidate to the hilt, either in the primaries (no matter what the national party decides is good for us), and in the general elections afterwards. Rubio in Florida is an example of what I am talking about. He is popular, he can win, and he is far more congenial to our cause than the currently anointed GOP candidate (who may no longer be so anointed in the wake of the Massachusetts Massacre).

The kind of money Scott Brown raised showed that none of our candidates need to bow to the national committees in order to find the funds to run. The RNC and Suck-Up Steele are now trying to claim Brown’s victory for themselves, by bruiting about that they sent him half a million bucks, some “consultants,” and a bunch of phones. Yet when the hammer came down, Brown went to us, the people, and we raised five million dollars for him in five days, fille his phone banks with eager volunteers, and put an army on the streets to turn out the vote.

... Barack Hussein Obama journeyed to Massachusetts and tied his Presidency to a Coakley victory. The Democrat state of Massachusetts has now rejected him roundly and soundly. After only a year, he has overnight become the lamest of ducks. Further, he’s not bright enough to pull a BJ Clinton and roll with the punch. He’s pledged to fight on. That fight will destroy him, and destroy his party for a generation.

On every issue — more bailouts, more stimuli, more deficits, higher taxes, statist health care, cap and trade, diplomatic apologetics, the shunning of natural gas, oil, and nuclear in favor of "millions of green jobs" subsidized by billions in federal "stimulus" — the Obama position polls 5-15 points below 50 percent.

After Van Jones, Anita Dunn, the Skip Gates mess, the "tea-bagger" slurs, the attacks on Fox News, the Copenhagen dashes, the bowing, the apologizing, the reordering of creditors, the NEA obsequiousness, the lackluster overseas-contingency-operation front, the deer-in-the-headlights pause on Afghanistan, the pseudo-deadlines on Iran, Guantanamo, and health care, the transparency and bipartisanship fraud, and dozens of other things, Obama simply does not have the popularity to carry unpopular legislation forward. Indeed, he is reaching a point where he may poll more negatively than his agenda does. "Let me be perfectly clear" and "make no mistake about it" are now caricatures.

So where are we at twelve months? Obama showed the country his vision of where he wanted us to go; he had both houses of Congress, a toady media, and enormous personal popularity — and he is getting nowhere. Why? Because most Americans are vehemently opposed to taking their country in the direction that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid would prefer.

Since Obama is both inexperienced and apparently a stubborn ideologue, I think all we will be left with when the novelty wears off is rhetoric and euphemism.

THE ARGUMENT THAT OBAMA IS FAILING BECAUSE HE HASN'T COMMUNICATED WELL IS AS IDIOTIC AS THE ONE OLD LEFTISTS USED TO SUE ALL THE TIME ABOUT THE USSR: "SOCIALISM DIDN'T FAIL, IT WASN'T IMPLEMENTED RIGHT; THE PEOPLE DID A BAD JOB OF IMPLEMENTING IT."

Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein directly linked worsening anti-Semitism with the United Nations “Goldstone Report” on alleged war crimes in last year’s Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist campaign aimed at putting a halt to eight years of lethal rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israel is preparing a response to the Goldstone report, and Edelstein commented Sunday, "It is certainly already clear that, for many of the 'incidents' and 'crimes' described in the report, no proof was found.” He said he will tell U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon that the report fueled attacks, many of them violent, against Jews around the world.

[...]

The anti-Semitic attacks “were mostly perpetrated by Muslims from large local Muslim communities, including Palestinians, mainly in France, Britain, Belgium, Scandinavia, Germany and the United States,” the report stated. In France, there were 631 incidents in the first six months compared with 464 for all of 2008, and more than 100 incidents were recorded in Paris, where the involvement of Muslim teenagers was noted. Among the attacks in France was one on a handicapped Jewish woman.

A good point is to be made about how the leading perpetrators of anti-semitism today in Europe are Islamofascists. At the same time, it's also leftists like Goldstone.

JERUSALEM (AP) - The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sued an Israeli newspaper on Monday for libel and defamation of character, claiming the Maariv daily is "maliciously trying to humiliate" her.

Sara Netanyahu is claiming damages of $270,000 from Maariv and demanding an apology and a correction for an item the paper ran last Friday. The story stated that Mrs. Netanyahu fired a 70-year-old gardener at the prime minister's official residence. The gardener lost a son in one of Israel's wars.

Mrs. Netanyahu claimed in a suit filed at a Jerusalem court that the man was never fired, continues to work at the residence and the news item contained not "one grain of truth."

She said reporter Ben Caspit never asked for her response, and the paper was trying to humiliate her and "portray her as an insensitive woman who abuses the weak, is cruel to an old gardener and fires a bereaved father for no reason."

The suit comes a week after a former housekeeper sued Sara Netanyahu for alleged verbal abuse and other mistreatment.

Maariv is slandering her, and that's what they did a decade ago too, harrassing a woman for being married to a right-wing politician.

The new lawsuit sparked a media frenzy, with Maariv and Yediot Ahronot running huge front page headlines critical of the Netanyahus. The two dailies are engaged in a bitter circulation war with "Yisrael Hayom," a newspaper distributed free of charge and strongly supportive of Netanyahu.

What that part signals is that they're vengeful of Yisrael Hayom because they're publishing what draws the crowds, and they don't like that. Actually, even the AP Wire is clearly filled with jealousy.

I think she's doing the right thing this time to fight back against these disgusting, ungrateful papers whose ownerships have a problem with competition and honesty. A decade ago, they and the police even targeted the Netanyahus on trumped up charges of taking gifts and other items against the rules, when in fact they had returned all required items. It's time now that the Netanyahus start fighting back against the resurging hostility of the press, which again looks out to commit more defamation.